Oliver Heaviside
1. Oliver Heaviside
I respect him.He was an English electrical engineer, mathematician, and physicist.
2. Genius of electricity
To understand an advanced theories of electricity, we need to learn mathematics.We need to use Laplace transforms even though we can not absolutely understand it.
He invented mathematical techniques, and that was equivalent to Laplace transforms.
He made a lot of achievements of electrical engineering.
So he is famous among people who study electrical engineering.
But, he was full of eccentricities in his later years, people thought that he was a weirdo.
3. Solitary scientist
He invented mathematics for electrical engineering.But he started his career as an engineer.
So I think he was a scientist rather than a mathematician.
His mathematics was 'applied mathematics'.
He said, "Mathematics is an experimental science, and definitions do not come first, but later on. They make themselves, when the nature of the subject has developed itself."
"Shall I refuse my dinner because I do not fully understand the process of digestion?"
(Oliver Heaviside)
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